


Comforting Advice

by FirebirdsDaughter



Series: Game Demos - Works of Kamen Rider Ex-Aid [4]
Category: Kamen Rider Ex-Aid
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Ghost of a Bugster, Original Character(s), Original Dead Character, Rider Bugster, Self-Hatred, Taddle Quest Bugster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 21:48:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11322411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FirebirdsDaughter/pseuds/FirebirdsDaughter
Summary: Tearing himself apart and losing his mind from the situation he's landed himself in, Hiiro gets some last minute advice from a concerned comrade.





	Comforting Advice

**Author's Note:**

> Just wanted to get this out, since I'm currently worrying over my eldest son and people seem to be giving him a lot of crap recently.  
> No matter what, please enjoy. Love y'all.

For a surgeon, having steady hands was paramount. He’d always been able to maintain perfect stillness and control no matter the situation, or the difficulty of the task at hand.  
Now, however, his hands wouldn’t stop trembling.  
He could think of a number of names for himself, making up quite the list with just a moment of thought. Most of the terms on it would have resulted in his mother boxing him on the ear and demanding change for foul language—but Kagami Himeko was dead seven years, and he doubted if she were alive, she’d excuse his current behaviour with a mere coin.  
A clink of armour and a flash of light blue beside him told him who it was who had suddenly taken the previously empty seat—but he didn’t look at her. He couldn’t.  
“What are we going to do?” Her voice was vague, almost dreamy, but he knew better than to assume that was how she felt—to the degree she could still feel. “What a mess we find ourselves in.” Finally, he turned his head to meet her eyes.  
Queen Taddie gazed back at him beatifically, her expression unwavering, a side-effect of her own abrupt death. Her only crown was her helm, sitting atop her tightly braided hair, but even this shadow of her former self exuded a sense of royalty.  
She had been the head of the Heroes’ Council for a reason.  
A touch of cold metal on the back of his hand interrupted his thoughts, and he looked down to discover his Rider Bugster had laid her gauntleted hand over his own. When he didn’t jerk away, she intertwined their fingers, squeezing gently. He closed his eyes to sigh before finding his voice.  
“Of course. The only person willing to try to comfort me is a Bugster’s ghost.” She made no reaction to the implied insult, or the venom of his tone. Instead, she squeezed his hand again, maintaining her vapid smile, her only tacit communication in her pale grey eyes.  
“So you will not even comfort yourself?” She said it so matter-of-factly, which just made it worse. He pulled his hand away, rising and walking to the window.  
“How can I?” Alone with her, he spat the words, giving voice to the pent-up self-loathing he’d held onto for so long. “This isn’t something that can be made okay, or be forgiven. I’ve gone too far to go back now.”  
“You know as well as I do that’s not true.” He heard her rise and come over to be beside him again.  
“Have you been paying attention?” She didn’t answer. He knew she had. He set his jaw before turning to look at her again, working to keep his own face blank. “I’m doing this for Saki.”  
“I know.”  
“I’m doing it because she deserves another chance.”  
“What about Emu?” She had started using the intern’s name after he’d said it once, and he couldn’t get her to stop. “What about Cronus’ ultimatum?”  
He lost his composure at the question, his face devolving into a mask of horror, grief, guilt, and so much more. He turned away from her, stalking away, just trying to get away from her calm stare, which bored into his brain and pulled out the deepest parts. She didn’t say anything else. Just waited. Her patience was rewarded.  
“I can’t.” His voice broke over the words, the tears he was so focused on preventing from his eyes coming through in his tone. “I… I can’t. I can’t even **imagine** … I never imagined we’d become friends, but now… Now, when I’ve hurt him so much already…” He grabbed the back of the chair to steady himself when his head swam and his balance failed. He knew she was watching him. She always was. “But… Saki…” Since her death, so much of his life had been terror—terror at the idea of losing someone else he loved. He’d pushed his father away, done his best to diffuse Poppy Pipopapo’s infectious cheer, and struggled with keeping his own surgical aides on the outside of his protective shell. But then the intern had shown up, and had somehow managed to make him care. The fear had come back with an icy vengeance when he’d thought he might lose the younger Rider, the frost of it cracking his shield open—fractures that Dan Masamune had sunk his claws into and ripped open. “Why couldn’t he just stay away from me?! He might never have been…” He trailed off, internally-directed anger boiling over. He punched the back of the chair with the same amount of force he wanted to strike himself with, shattering it and sending splinters of wood cascading to the floor like an explosion had hit. Taddie did not blink, her eyes on his face rather than his hands. “I can’t lose either of them but I can’t choose between them.” He slumped over, putting his head in his hands.  
“So don’t choose.” She offered quietly. He merely shook his head, refusing to look at her again, already feeling scrutinised by the outburst she had brought forth from him.  
This time, he didn’t hear her move, but felt the gentle touch of her hand against his back, rubbing softly. They were both silent for a long moment.  
“Hiiro…” She spoke with more emotion than he’d ever heard her use before—love and sorrow and hope and fear saturating her voice. Her hand pressed against his shoulder blades firmly, then leaned her cheek against his back, extending her ams to wrap them around his torso; it was surprisingly comfortable, considering she was clad in knight’s armour. “… The smile **I** wanted to restore…” There was a hitch in her breath that might have been the start of tears. “… Was **yours**.”  
His breath escaped from him in a surprised gasp. With the same speed, her pressure on his back disappeared, making him turn around, eyes casting about for her.  
But she was gone.  
He rifled through his pockets quickly, taking out her Gashat, clutching it tightly. There was no sense of personality, no aura of awareness. It was no more than a tool for transformation, empty of the thoughts it had once possessed.  
“… I see.” He said the words with the same, slow, sad tone he used to give condolences to the families of patients who died in the hospital, despite never having been involved with their care. He had never gotten involved with things emotionally before he met the intern, but he had known for a long time the pain of losing someone. “… So that was the limit of your data.”  
When Ace had disappeared, Dan Kuroto had loudly mused that it was likely that when the Rider Bugster’s memory ran out, there was one last surge of information that returned them to themselves rather than a ghost; gave them back their personal thoughts and feelings—one last flash of bravado before a permanent end.  
If he subscribed to that belief, then Taddie’s last words had been what was truly in her heart.  
He held the Gashat closely against his chest, breathing heavily and slowly. He was grateful; there was a warm, gentle feeling that went with the knowledge that someone had wanted to save him.  
But the nasty, twisting feeling of guilt returned when he remembered that he couldn’t be saved.  
_So don’t choose_.  
Those three words echoed in his head like faint sparks from pieces of flint. Slowly, however, the sparks hit something else, beginning a meagre blaze that began to grow. An idea.  
He returned the Gashat to his pocket, heading out the door. Perhaps there was a way to do this.  
But there was someone he needed to talk to, first.

**Author's Note:**

> I am currently working on focus works for each member of the Heroes' Council, so you'll get more of Taddie herself when I have time. She basically looks like a person version of Brave's suit.  
> As for his mother, she will certainly appear again.  
> The person he's going to talk to will also get explained in another piece, though I'm hesitant to go too far with her until I know what the official canon plan is...


End file.
